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She stops for a moment and rests her head in her hand, composing herself. She draws several deep breaths and doesn’t speak for a full two minutes.
“It’s okay, Meredith. Tell me what happened next.”
“I was promoted,” she says sadly, looking up at me with tired eyes. “I was given more and more difficult cases and had very little supervision. It was exactly what my boyfriend wanted, but I didn’t know it at the time. Seventy-five percent of the kids I worked with had gifts. They were overwhelmingly in bad homes, thought to be freaks or demented.”
“And your boyfriend had a lot of family friends,” I guess.
She nods and takes another deep breath. “The first boy, his name was Monty. I found out later that his foster family was forcing him to have visions about them. They wanted wealth and power. If he couldn’t correctly predict what they wanted, they would lock him up in the basement and refuse to feed him. I was devastated.”
My stomach turns and bile rises in my throat. How could anyone do that to a child? “That isn’t your fault, Meredith. They manipulated you, they lied, you couldn’t have known.”
“It was my job to protect him.” Her voice breaks. New tears show in her eyes. “He’d already had a horrible life when he met me, and I dropped him in a den of wolves thinking they were safe people. He died two years ago, Graveyard. They starved him to death.”
I hang my head and feel the weight of her words. She feels responsible for his death. How could she not? But it wasn’t her fault.
“So you quit,” I say, trying to find out more. “Pocus and Seer saw it in your file. You quit after your first year.”
“I ran after my first year,” she whispers. “I didn’t know about Monty then. I didn’t know what happened to any of the kids who were adopted out of foster care. I let my ego get to me. I was just so happy I’d found a place for them. I never thought to inquire further. And then I found out…”
She trails off, clearly too afraid to say more. I can’t imagine what can be more terrible than what she’s already shared, but this person, this ex-boyfriend still has a hold on her. She’s petrified of what he can do, clearly.
“What did you find out?” I prompt.
“My caseload got bigger, but I wasn’t finding any more kids with gifts. It had to be a mistake. There was no way I went from having a caseload of seventy-five percent gifted kids to having none. So, I started digging.”
“Let me guess. That had something to do with the boyfriend.”
She nods and looks down at her free hand. “He stole my credentials. He worked for the city, too, and he used my log-in to find foster kids. I told you, he sensed gifts too. He’d track them down and pull them out of the system before I could get to them.”
“He cut out the middleman.”
“I realized that he never loved me. He never cared about those kids. I was a tool to him because I had access to those files. I was going to quit grad school,” she says bitterly. “I had a breakdown. I was going to quit because I didn’t think I could cut it, and he encouraged me through it. He convinced me to stay.”
Her tears fall in earnest now. She stops every few words to wipe her face. Yet with each revelation, I see her guard torn down brick by brick. I might be the first person she’s fully trusted since this ex of hers. I won’t betray that trust.
But I can’t deny that the room is getting hazy. My vision blurs, and I feel lightheaded. There’s more to the story. I have to keep her talking. I promise myself that as soon as she’s done, I’ll go right to the hospital. I force myself to concentrate.
“What was he doing? Why did he want the kids?”
“First, he was just finding homes for them, easy places where he could access them. That’s what he needed me for. But he ran out of places to send them. There were so many, Graveyard. There were hundreds and hundreds of kids.”
“He sent them into the gangs,” I say, realization dawning on me. “Four years ago numbers were dwindling, and he saw an opportunity.”
“I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let him exploit those kids. So I left in the middle of the night. I had a few contacts of my own, safehouses for kids who were escaping abusive homes. Then I roamed the streets, literally going from house to house. I didn’t have any of my information, but I could feel them. The second I ran across a gift, I immediately investigated.”
“How many kids?” I ask her.
“Forty-three, including Charlie. It’s not enough, Graveyard. Not nearly enough. But without the state’s resources, I’ve been doing this on my own. Some kids are easier than others. I can find safe homes for them in a matter of weeks.”
“But Charlie’s been harder,” I guess.
“People don’t want a girl who feels death. Most people think she must be demonic or something. It’s not like she asked to be born with this gift.”
“How have you done it?” I ask her. “How’ve you managed to keep yourself going these years without a job or friends?”
“I have friends,” she says with a small smile and an almost indignant tone. “I have very good friends who’ve financially supported me. You have no idea, Graveyard. There are very affluent people with gifts or gifted children. But even they can’t stop him.”
“And you can?” I ask, skeptical.
